Comments on: Links 3/31/11http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html
Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and powerFri, 09 Dec 2016 13:21:25 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.5By: Richard Klinehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364336
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:52:49 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364336So exiled, I don’t think Curtis to be a racist at all on the basis of what he wrote, and I know nothing of his career. The factual basis of some of what he says appears to be sound as far as he goes; it’s where he doesn’t go that’s the problem. What I take exception to the construction of a narrative which excludes most of what is really significant in the issue under discussion, especially an issue as important as this one. I suspect Curtis simply rushed to blog a point rather than thought things through. . . . It might be good if Curtis tried a do-over from a more thoughtful perspective.
]]>By: Graveltonguehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364306
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:35:20 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364306Excellent, thank you for that Philip.
]]>By: Crohttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364253
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:33:28 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364253Who interprets this treaty? Who enforces it? The security council? It seems with the attendant qualifications (that don’t really ever add up to making any part of the covenant void) nearly every country has signed this thing. How many have ever acted as though it were some sort of restraint on their actions or even a guidepost for them?

Let me say I’m not against this sort of thing. International treaties enshrining what we can collectively hold to be our inalienable rights that is. It’s just immensely frustrating to see things like this signed and then promptly ignored and forgotten instead of honored and enforced. Why even bother acting as though they were anything but a political maneuver of the time, a make work project for international institutionalists to keep busy, and let it go that we can’t even dream of enforcing the thing if interpretation is up to individual governments?

I’m sorry Mr. Doom, I’m not trying to be cantankerous. I just don’t see how citing an international convention by a committee of a voluntary international body made up of sovereign states as though it were some form of law with an expectation of enforcement is useful as a working argument among anyone once we get outside the party lines of those who think one should be obligated to honor treaties one signs because one signed it.

I think the only treaties, agreements, and covenants between nations that can be expected to be honored are those that are of such nature that if they are NOT honored, they will impose on a nation’s sovereignty, (of which nations tend to be VERY defensive of) or their national interests (of which they are also very defensive of).

Have we seen any other actual operating mechanism ever actually at work from the foundation of the UN to today?

I’d actually like to see the takes of those participating in this thread on that. I figure it’s a fairly intitutionalist crowd. Hope no-one is insulted and is just taking this as an actual question.

]]>By: Exiledhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364226
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:08:28 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364226I guess we can all agree that you clearly don’t like Adam Curtis. My sense is you are familiar with Curtis’ work, and hate him. From there, attacking Curtis is just a matter of filling in the dots: “Curtis is a liar.” “Curtis don’t know shee-it about history.” And the big whopper: “Curtis is a racist.” That’s a classic sign that the commenter really, really hates Curtis on a gut level, so he’s reaching into his bag of cheap smears, because he’s not sure he’s got his audience worked up sufficiently into the rage he’s feeling, for reasons I can’t grasp, though somehow Curtis offended him deeply.

For the record, Curtis obviously is not a racist, and this Richard knows it. Curtis has an interesting background–he was a classmate in an unusual art school in England with the frontmen from the Gang of Four and the Mekons back in the late 70s. If you’re familiar with those early Gang of Four records (which were great), they all share this sort of post-radical-leftwing Situationist weltanschauung (sorry for the pretentious Germanism). Meaning they’re very, very conscious of the manipulative power of images, narrative, and most of all, of the failure of the ’68 left.

It’s funny, the British director Paul Tickell sort of loathes Curtis also, largely out of professional jealousy, but also because Paul is a bit too earnest and intellectually rigorous to take such an aestheticized/stylized approach to documentaries as Curtis does. Paul has done well by most people’s standards, but not by Curtis’s standards. Paul is also a Brit, from the same generation as Curtis, and did the best documentary on punk/Sex Pistols, including an amazingly candid interview with the always-slippery Malcolm MacLaren (another post-Situationist type)–but I’m sure Paul would never, ever stoop so low as to accuse Curtis of racism.

So basically, this commenter is trying to make the point I see a lot when smart people are offended and don’t want that revealed: “It’s nothing new, it’s old, in fact he didn’t get the half of it, I’m not impressed or offended–Oh and by the way, he’s a racist.” In Yosemite Sam-speak, it means, “Damn you, Adam Curtis, you long-eared varmint! I’ll ain’t affended, y’hear?!”

Re: “Regulators were caught ‘flat-footed’ by a breakdown we had erroneously thought was more than adequately reserved against.”

When Greenspan says “we,” he means the useful idiots that Wall Street insists on, while blackballing whomever is not a suitably true believer in the deregulatory kool-aid being doled out by Greenspan’s co-religionists on behalf of their financial god too complex for mortals to know.”

Exactly my point above. People were hired to undo good work, and replace it with bad. GIGO. Like a virus in the computer, corrupting the system.

There’s more to this story. Glad to see it put to ‘paper’ [as they used to say].

]]>By: Awesomehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364208
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:28:56 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364208…I was just commenting/thinking on this very idea and I am happy to have an article to further my understanding.

Cool about Yves’ credit at CP. She rocks. I’m going over there now. Thanks for the link.

]]>By: problem with typing?http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364201
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:23:38 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364201problem with redundancy? [Other problems too… just one to mention among others]
]]>By: Anonymous Commenthttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/links-33111.html#comment-364199
Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:21:44 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=16977#comment-364199IMO, no need for a ‘however’ between our comments. What you say is another side of the same multi-sided coin, if such a thing could be conceived. Those who do not want ‘regulation’ are the same those who do not want ‘treaties’. It’s different layers of the exact same problem. Liberty at all cost to the taxpayer/peasant.

[There is a saying that comes to mind just now – from the elites from the old, old days: ‘The peasants are always revolting.’ If you think of the double entendre, you understand the deeper perspective and why equality is hard to reach. Just sayin.]

About your idea that ‘it’ is either a problem of too little government or it is a problem of too much government as being two distinct and uncompatible ideas, I would like to expand your thinking on that if I may. It is simultaneously a pr\oblem of governments redeuncy and waste due to a too big to fail attitude amongst certain parts of the govt…

AND a wretched concoction of certain people who take jobs for the express purpose of destroying the efficacy of same. People like, say, Alan Greenspan [for instance] or anyone else like him. Who take a job knowing full well they despise the concepts for which the purpose of the job was created. Someone like that might passionately still believe they are a credible source of information on the subject because they believe so strongly that they did the right thing. They were trusting and passionate and still believe they should’ve done it all over again because ‘who could have known’. Yada Yada.

[Now, some may say… Hey, FED isn’t govt. Yeah, that’s why it’s just a for instance, recognizable metaphor. wink, wink.] The point being… treasury is. And wouldn’t you know – revolving doors. How did we all miss it, eh? Who could have known?